Feds propose listing local steelhead as 'threatened' species

Federal officials Wednesday proposed to extend the protections of the Endangered Species Act to the Puget Sound region's stocks of steelhead, one of the most sought-after game fish in North America.

The law already can be used to restrict building and drinking-water withdrawals to protect chinook salmon. In addition to extending those limits farther up into Puget Sound-area watersheds, the plan could curtail or even end fishing for the fabled steelhead around here.

One of the Puget Sound area's most battered runs of steelhead spawns in the Cedar River, a source of Seattle's drinking water. Although some think the additional protections proposed Wednesday could spell trouble for that drinking-water supply, city officials say they could help the steelhead without reducing Seattleites' water supplies.

Steelhead stocks in this region "are all on downward trends, and in most of the rivers, the numbers are getting so small you have to question whether the population is even viable," Wright said. "In the Lake Washington system, they're functionally extinct." Fifty or fewer adult steelhead have returned to the Lake Washington/Cedar River ecosystem in the past four years.

The federal proposal would classify steelhead as "threatened," meaning they aren't on the verge of extinction yet, but are headed that way. If they were judged instead to be right at the precipice, they would be considered "endangered," calling for tighter restrictions.

Anglers and fishing guides braced for potentially bad news when the agency announces its decision next year.

"It will probably drastically affect the way we do business," said Rob Endsley, a fishing guide who takes steelhead anglers mostly to the Skagit River. "Honest to God, 90 percent of my business on the rivers is people who just want to catch and release a steelhead -- a wild steelhead. ... Wild fish fight twice as hard as hatchery fish. They're twice the size, twice as powerful. There's a mystique around them. I get people from all over the country who just come to catch one and let it go."

Currently, state rules seek to minimize the catching of wild steelhead and require fishermen who do catch them in the Puget Sound region to throw them back.

Although it seemingly makes sense to raise a bunch of steelhead in hatcheries and let fishermen catch those, that's part of the reason the fish are in trouble today, biologists say. That's traceable to a complicated series of circumstances that include hatchery fish competing with wild fish for food and wild fish getting caught and killed when anglers target hatchery-bred steelhead.

The fishery agency said it would try to see its way clear to not imposing the Endangered Species Act restrictions, although it couldn't promise anything.

"The reason for having a proposal and then waiting a year is to see if something happens that would change your mind," said Brian Gorman, an agency spokesman. "There may be some hatchery reforms that would cast a different light on this."

That's exactly where the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, which runs many steelhead hatcheries, is headed, said Jeff Koenings, the department's director. A departmental science study of the effect of hatcheries on wild steelhead populations -- the ones that would be protected under the Endangered Species Act -- is due out in May.

Then the state will work out plans to minimize the effect of hatcheries on wild steelhead, Koenings said.

Seattle's water supply in the Cedar River should be safe, said Rand Little, a biologist for Seattle Public Utilities, in part because the city already takes steps to help steelhead there.

Seattle has obtained federal approval for a habitat conservation plan, which required the city to open up 17 miles of the Cedar previously walled off by a dam from spawning salmon and steelhead.

Behind the dam where a fish ladder was added were a bunch of rainbow trout, he said, and here's an interesting twist to the steelhead story: They're really rainbow trout that decide to head off to the ocean like a salmon.

The city also has built a storage reservoir that should allow technicians to keep enough water in the Cedar to sustain fish even in dry summers, city officials say.

The question is: Will federal authorities count rainbow trout -- which could become steelhead under the right conditions -- toward recovery of steelhead? The proposal released Wednesday indicates not, quoting a scientific report that says the rainbows "by themselves should not be relied upon to maintain long-term viability" of a steelhead run.

Those skeptical of the need for the Endangered Species Act protections for steelhead pointed to evidence that the biggest factor in their population slide has been a 15-year cycle of poor conditions in the Pacific Ocean and perhaps Puget Sound. Restrictions on what happens inland won't help, they argue.

But many scientists say that although people can't control ocean conditions, they can control how many fish are caught and how many are produced in hatcheries.

One of the worried scientists is Nate Mantua of the University of Washington, who left his native California to come here in part because he loves fishing for steelhead.

"Steelhead have this mystique around them, and a lot of people, including me, have an obsession about them," he said. When it comes to steelhead, "Puget Sound was formerly the last, best place, and it's not today. It's a fraction of what it was."